This a guest post by Will Garde, from the Caffeinated Engineer, who has provided technical support to CRS’ Blue Harvest program this past year. Knowledge-based Coffee Watershed Management We know a lot about sustainable agricultural practices, and the specialty coffee industry has been a pioneer in incentivizing farmers to adapt good practices. But these practices, require time […]
If you have been following the Coffeelands blog, you’ll know that Price Risk Management is a topic that if increasing importance to us. I’ve been writing about this topic for the last 9 months and talking about it for even longer. Finally, this last week, I got to walk the walk. With the help of […]
In August, after 14 years with CRS (more than 12 of them leading the agency’s coffee programming), I will be leaving CRS and transitioning to a new role as Director of Sourcing and Sustainability at Intelligentsia Coffee based in Chicago. In the meantime, I need to help hire a replacement to lead the CRS Coffeelands […]
Next week, a public hearing in Brazil’s Câmara dos Deputados will explore the issue of modern slavery in the country’s coffee sector. The Human Rights Commission and the Labor Commission have jointly convened the gathering, scheduled for Wednesday, 15 June at 2 pm in meeting room #9. The event was organized by the Articulação dos Empregados […]
Brazil’s Supreme Court has lifted its injunction on one of the most powerful and distinctive tools in the country’s campaign to eradicate slave labor, clearing the way for its reinstatement after a suspension that lasted nearly 17 months. The “Dirty List”—a public registry of employers found by the Ministry of Labor to be employing workers […]
Nearly two months have passed since the curtains closed on the 2016 SCAA events in Atlanta, but like the great Ray Charles, I still have Georgia on my mind. Three Ps stand out in my reflections: Policy, Progress and Paul Katzeff.
A few weeks ago, Starbucks made an incredible announcement. They were going to have nitro cold brew in their cafes!! I think this definitively answers the Symposium question, is cold brew a category or craze? OK, OK. I’m joking. The real earth-shaker is that Starbucks has issued the first US corporate bond for sustainability. The […]
A few months ago, in the offices of Anacafé in Guatemala City, the II Cumbre de la Roya was held, 2 years after the initial meeting. The objective of the meeting was to take stock of what has happened since the first meeting and to see how the Central American coffee sector was recovering from […]
This review is for those of you who were not able to make it to the lecture a few weeks ago. There was a lot of competing lectures held concomitantly with really interesting content. There is 0 chance of me getting to hear all the ones I want to be at. Yet when the Expo comes, […]
Caravela Coffee, the vertically integrated exporter/importer formerly known as Virmax, has been a key CRS partner in our Borderlands project in Colombia, delivering dozens of single-farm and community lots to Counter Culture and Stumptown over the past three years and delivering quality premiums to hundreds of smallholder growers who had never earned them before. This […]